


Can't Lose You

by JadeofRen



Series: The Force Connecting Us: You And I [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Committed Relationship, Committed Reylo, Dystopian, F/M, Fluff, One Shot Collection, Rey needs to be careful, Survival, angsty zombie story no one asked for, characters we love are zombies, smut come soon, sorry ya'll
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:47:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21642415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JadeofRen/pseuds/JadeofRen
Summary: Prompt: Zombies and Prisons.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: The Force Connecting Us: You And I [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1560184
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	Can't Lose You

_One._

Ben breathes. Rey braces herself.

_Two._

The last rays of the sun were long gone.

_Three._

**GO.**

We’ve just got to make it down the street. Just down the street. Down the street. Down the–

“Ben! On your right!”

Rey watches as time slows, as Ben ducks low and sweeps his foot under a walker. The groan that emanates from between the walker’s lips is putrid and stale and rises with the dust as it hits the ground, but Rey barely watches it fall, because it will get back up again. Soon.

She reacts, she is nothing but reaction as she grabs Ben’s hand, pulls him up and they are running, running, _running_ for high walled gate at the end of the dirt road.

A sentry sees them coming from his post and runs to the hit the alarm. As the lights flashed silently across the length of the wall, the sentry runs to the lever and starts to rotate the crank that will open the steel gate. A loud metal against metal sound groans as the heavy steel lifts from the ground, a heralding siren, signaling a running approach.

At a certain distance, the portcullis stops, and the sentry takes a step away from the level, their hand wrapping around the release instead. Rey understands. She knows Ben does, too.

The steel door was their strongest line of defense. It was impenetrable closed. Open, it was the weakest and easiest point of entry into the prison.

Rey reaches behind him and pushes Ben forward, impressive with Ben’s height and mass. But she is quicker than he is. Ben has brute strength, she has speed. Roles reversed, he would stand there at the gate, and let them attack him so that she could escape. Because Ben thinks the best way to show his love is through sacrifice. Whatever. What the fuck ever. She wasn’t going to stand around and let him get killed because he—

“Rey? Rey!"

She can hear them now, can hear what has him panicking. There were three chasers behind them now, drawing closer with each second. Rey doesn’t know where they came from, but she never does. And now is not the time for thinking. They’ve are almost there.

_We’ve just got to make it under the gate. Just under the gate. Under the gate. Under the—_

Rey inhales.

Ben reaches the gate first and slides under it with the ease of a baseball player gunning for home base. Considering Ben’s never played the sport, it was a grim reminder of how many times this scenario has played out.

Rey reaches the gate just _seconds_ after Ben does and prepares to drop so she can roll under it.

_Under the gate. Under the gate. Under the–_

She lurches to a cold stop when a hand sinks into her shoulder, the meat of it, gripping with the unnatural strength of someone who no longer held the fear of death, but fought desperately for a survival that was inherently drilled into their slush brains.

“Rey!”

Rey—Ben’s favorite song. Songs. He has a few of them. One was:

_Oh, if this little light of mine_

_Combined with yours today,_

_How many watts could we luminate?_

_How many villages could we save?_

None. They had tried and they couldn’t save any. They could only preserve the one they had but it didn’t need to be saved. It had saved them.

On occasion, when he thinks they are alone, Ben will sing:

_I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,_

_I can see all obstacles in my way._

_Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind_

_It's gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny Rey!_

Corny. Campy. But she loves it when he does that. And maybe that’s why she is thinking of songs, think of him, instead of what is happening. What was going to happen any second now if she did not focus and—

“Rey!”

Rey lurches forward, tearing out of the chaser’s grip. She scrambles the last few steps to the gate and practically hurls herself at it, grasping Ben’s outstretched arm.

She had a few songs she would sing to Ben, too, if she could sing.

_I wanna run to you_

_Won't you hold me in your arms?_

_And keep me safe from harm_

Somewhere in her head—the part that wasn’t filled with crippling dread, numbing fear, or the desolation of their situation—Rey smiles because Ben was _always_ there, with his hand out, picking her up, pulling her along.

_Won't you hold me in your arms?_

Ben yanks her under the sharp, sheared to a point spikes of the portcullis and into the safety of his arms before screaming to the sentry to drop the gate.

_And keep me safe from harm_

Rey watches the wild convulsing of an arm, its pale grey mottled flesh sweeping back and forth, slithering, inching under, before the gate slams down on it, severing it from the body. Ben races to the arm, grabs it and flings it back over the high wall to join the rest of it.

But not before Rey can see the tattoo. The flaming wings of the Resistance’s starbird. _Kaydel. God, it was Kaydel. She had known, when she hadn’t shown back up from her running mission four days ago that this is what had happened, but she didn’t want to believe it. She wanted to believe…she wanted to believe…_

Rey grieves for five seconds. It is two seconds longer than she would give for anyone else. Longer than she actually has. _Three seconds, three seconds, three seconds._

Then she shakes the sorrow off like a loose garment, like a snake sheds its skin. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen a friend like that. It wouldn’t be the last.

_What’s alive must live._

So, Rey turns around to congratulate Ben—to hug, and kiss, and treasure him—but Ben is looking at her with so much fire in his eyes that Rey retreats to the threshold of his rage.

At first, she is confused. Then she is angry, too, because what the fuck. “What’s your problem?”

Ben takes a moment, eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring, before he closes the gap between them. He sweeps over Rey’s body with his hands, checking all over, muttering to himself. She could slap his hands away, tell him she’s fine, but this is a part of protocol. It’s a little…more frantic than the mandatory checks after running missions usually are but she lets him do it his way. Finally, he peels Rey’s camouflage jacket back and hisses.

“Goddamn it!” He turns towards the sentry. “Get Finn out here! Rey’s been scratched! I need a transport!”

Rey blinks, bewildered. She peeks over to where Ben has ripped her jacket from her shoulder and yeah, sure enough, blood, three shallow gashes that run from her neck to her bicep. She understands Ben’s panic, but she also doesn’t. She’d been given a highly concentrated anti-viral load before she’d left the prison compound that morning. A scratch, one that had barely broken the skin, wasn’t going to—

Before Rey can voice that very obvious fact, she feels herself being lifted up, up into Ben’s arms. She rolls his eyes, struggles a bit in his grip. “Ben. Put me down.”

Ben doesn’t answer her, instead runs them across the courtyard to meet Finn and Rose, who follows behind operations manager with the only gurney they were able to salvage.

“Solo,” Finn tries, his tone placating, but Rey can hear the annoyance as well. “Do you think all of this is necessary? Pamich told me it was just a scratch.” Finn stops the gurney just shy of the large bay doors that lead into the prison. Ben doesn’t say anything, just glares, all animus and threat born of fear, so Finn shakes his head and moves out of the way. ”She won’t need the full hour. Maybe fifteen minutes?”

“She’s getting the full fucking hour,” he growls. No one stops him again. No one gets in his way.

Rey is silent as Ben pushes the gurney through the now open doors of the prison and wheels her down toward the infirmary, Rose hot on his heels. It’s not like anything she says will change what is happening. Might as well let him get it out of his system—no matter that they are wasting time and resources.

Rose doesn’t leave her side the entire trip. It isn’t fear. There was something else shining in Rose’s eyes, a helplessness that came from realizing that something this small could unravel even the toughest men.

If Ben lost it—like Poe had—then they were all lost.

People stop fearing Ben a year ago. They’d stop resenting him for the role he played in his company bringing this plague to the world around the same time.

It was funny.

The First Order thought the solution to the overpopulation crisis was a temporary but very effective sterilization drug, one that would last 10 years, enough time for the world to stabilize, refresh, reset.

Equalizer stopped fertility, alright.

It also stopped the hearts of five billion people, turning those who took the voluntary drug into undead hoards.

The earth _did_ reset, however, so they did do something right. The world’s inhabitants no longer wiped out forests and polluted the ocean and consumed every viable resource it could touch. The meal had changed. The pyramid flipped. Maslow’s Hierarchy became mangled.

The hunters became the hunted.

So, no one had time for resentment anymore. They only had survival. They only had each other.

An hour later, Rey was watching the timer on the decontamination room with a bored, glazed over look. Rose had bandaged her shoulder up, and to satisfy Ben’s silent yet looming, hostile demands, she’d given Rey another round of anti-viral medication.

Resources. Resources they did not have. Resources that did not need to go to waste.

Ben was on the other side, standing there with his huge arms crossed, staring down the aristocratic line of his nose, watching. He hasn’t said anything the entire time they were there—just stared. No one was foolish enough to enter the room, save Rose, who’d slipped him the key to the phase pulse blaster.

It was the…more human way to deal with someone who had turned. One minute they were there. The next—particles of a once alive, quickly dying being, scattered to the wind.

It was the only time Ben tore his eyes from her. To stare at it, with all the hate he could muster.

Rey wants to be as angry as he is, wants to berate and lecture Ben for being emotional. He never used to be emotional. He had emotions—anger being the most prevalent—but he was never emotionally reckless. Emotions never got them anywhere, especially in days like these, but…but Rey understands.

She understands Ben’s fears.

Understands the brutal, uncompromising way Ben was overprotective of her, of all of them.

Understands that Ben is still plagued with nightmares because he watched an undead tear into his mother as she screamed at him to escape.

Understands that each time he watched a friend, or a loved one, or _anyone_ , devoured, it was, in some part, his fault. That he’d never, and might never, forgive himself.

If anyone understands Ben, it’s her.

So, instead of yelling like she wants to, Rey presses her forehead against the thick plastic walls of the decontamination unit. “I’m sorry.”

She hears footsteps and looks up. He is no longer glaring at the phase pulse gun, or at her. Ben is pacing, heavy, long legged stomps that take him from one end of the room to the other in three or four steps.

“I didn’t know,” Rey admits quietly, watching him go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Ben turns and the fire is back on her. “Don’t you ever… in your life… do that again,” he says, voice guttural, and raw, hurt, and scared. That was the thing about Ben. He seemed emotionless until he wasn’t. Then everything came through. On his face. In his voice. The rigid way he held his body, like he would crack and splinter if pushed just right. “Nothing is worth that.”

Rey eyes the large backpack full of water bottles and packs of military rations across the room. They would decontaminate the pack later, piece by piece, meticulously, because nothing could be wasted if possible. It wasn’t much that she was able to snag, but every bit helped. The water would last them for days, the rations for weeks.

That is her job. That’s what scavengers do. They save.

“I had to,” her voice breaks, so she clears her throat and tries again, this time with conviction. “I _had_ to, Ben.”

“No!” he yells, his voice breaking—except when her voice broke, it was tiny fissures in a drinking glass. Ben’s was like dropping a windowpane from the roof of a five-story building. First, he kicks the chair he’d opted not to sit on, then a trashcan. “No, you didn’t have to! We do that in daylight hours, Rey. I don’t care if you’re our best runner! I don’t care! I don’t care that you think you have to look out for all of us. I,” and he slams a hand across his chest, “I need you safe. The rest of them can go to hell.”

Ben’s fuming but Rey frowns at him, anyways. “You don’t mean that. Don’t ever say anything like that again.”

Ben continues, his jaw clenching. “What would have happened to you if I hadn’t been in that warehouse with you? If I hadn’t followed you because you want to fucking sneak out and be a goddamn martyr?”

Rey is silent and Ben some more, pieces sliding across concrete. “Answer me, Rey! You almost walked into a room full of them! If you…if you had…” Ben’s pacing stops abruptly. He spins away from Rey, giving her his back.

“You would have—” She stops, swallows, works the words back down into her gut because she can’t say it. Even though they both need to hear it right now, she can’t.

_You would continue to live without me._

_You would shoot me down like a dog if I ever attacked you._

_You would live to love again._

_What is alive must live._

“I can’t lose you, Rey,” he whispers, haunted. “I’ve lost everything else, everyone else. I can’t lose you.”

The timer for the lock on the decontamination room buzzes and a loud _thunk_ follows. Slowly, Rey pushes the door back and takes the few steps across the room to stand behind Ben.

Ben is tall, and broad, and strong, and so good. Despite his past. He was so, so good.

Patiently, Rey wraps her arms around Ben’s waist and pulls him close. She inhales his scent, leftover rations of a lotion his father had bought him only days before the hoards descended on Chandrila. She takes in another whiff, this time holding it in her chest, savoring how the calming scent of it, and him—smoky logs, sandalwood, argon oil, soap, sweat—washes over her.

“I’m sorry, Ben. I can’t say I won’t do it again. I’m not going to lie to you so that you can feel better about this. Our situation. Our lives. But I am sorry.”

Ben doesn’t turn around, but a hand—large, warm, safe—comes up and slides across Rey’s, folding her tiny one into his. “I was so scared. I wanted to scream, I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do _anything_. I felt useless and hopeless and so damn terrified. And then I saw the scratch—I panicked.”

Rey thinks she remembers her father and mother in that moment. She tries to remember their faces but can’t. So, it’s a fleeting, ephemeral thing—a glimpse of them lowering her into a basket, walking away, leaving, leaving, leaving, forever.

But she feels Ben. She has memorized every line, every fabric, facet and notion of the man in front of her.

He was her only saving grace, the only grounding factor in her life.

Ben was her inspiration, her muse to live, her divine intervention.

He was the love of her life in this piss and shit world they were forced to survive in.

“I’ll be here, with you, until I’m not, Ben. You have to believe in that. It _has_ to be enough.”

The grip on her hand tightens. “You have to promise, then.”

Rey’s burrows into the space between his shoulder blades, her eyes sliding close. “Promise what?”

“You have to promise me that you’ll be here until that day comes. You cannot leave before then. I’m going to do everything I can do to make sure it’s when you’re old and grey and we’re not living like this anymore, so please…please…”

He is trembling, and so is Rey. She lifts up on her tiptoes and kisses the nape of Ben’s neck.

“I promise, my love.”


End file.
